Assessing Scope Management Practices in New Product Development Projects: The Case of dVentus Technologies
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Date
2021-10-29
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
A project's success depends on its management. The unlimited market need should be compromised with the limited resource through an application of proper project management technique. Throughout all the phases of a project, the management team takes care of the time, cost and quality constraints of a project. There are several knowledge areas that a project manager must understand and implement in order to be successful in those constraints. This study was conducted to assess one, but most critical knowledge area of project management (project scope management) on New Product Development projects of dVentus Technologies. It examined how dVentus Technologies manage the scope of its New Product Development projects through the analysis of the elements of project scope management (Plan Scope, Define Scope, Collect Requirements, Create WBS, Validate Scope and Control Scope). A descriptive research design was employed for the study. A Census of the whole population has been involved in the data collection. Accordingly, primary data was collected through interviews and questionnaires from 42 employees working in New Product Development projects of dVentus Technologies. A mix of both qualitative and quantitative approaches were implemented to collect the primary data from respondents. Additionally secondary data obtained from a review of related literature and archived documents were utilized. After a reliability measurement of the variables by Cronbach alpha, the descriptive statistics and mean was computed to interpret the results. Accordingly, the case organization has a major problem of collecting requirements and controlling the scope with a mean value being below average. This indicates an absence of a well-organized requirement management plan resulting in uncontrolled modification of project scope. The study also touched on the challenges for effective implementation of project scope management in the case organization and found that setting unrealistic deadlines makes scope management the most challenging. The recommended solutions for the identified problems are listed in the last chapter of this document. The study recommends future research in the causes and effects of the problems identified. As there are remote teams working in NPD projects, Communication management would also be an interesting issue next to innovation and technology management
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Project Scope Management, New Product Development, dVentus Technologies